Georgia Pen Pals

We received our first letters this week from our pen pals and we were so excited!  Our pen pals go to school in Hephziba, Georgia, which is a town outside Atlanta, Georgia.  We have looked up their school and also took a look at their lunch menu, which is so different from ours!  We will write to them throughout the school year!  (I met their teacher, Mrs. Darrisaw, when I attended the Mickelson Exxon Mobil Teacher's Academy in New York a couple of years ago.)

Inference in a Bag

This morning we had a reteach lesson on inferencing.  I chose passages to place in a paper bag and the question was taped to the outside of the bag.  Students rotated through six stations and took turns reading the passages and working together to find the inference of each passage and we really focused on finding proof in the passage to back up our answers.  We will be taking our second test over this target later today!

May the Force Be With You

We conducted an experiment today to test how height and weight effects force and distance traveled.  We used a car and ramp and adjusted how high we released the car during each test.  Here is a picture of our test car and a couple of videos of part of the experiement! 

How to Round by Paris and Brandon

Our class is presenting the mini-lesson Monday morning during the morning assembly and Paris and Brandon recorded this video this afternoon to add to our power point slide show.  We will show it after the rap song we are singing.  The song explains the steps you complete to round any size number.

Subtraction with Regrouping Across a Zero

          Today we have been continuing to work on subtracting with regrouping with one or more zeroes.  This is a difficult process for some fourth graders because they do not understand the concept- they just know the steps or the process.  We have worked on this skill all week and have had the conversations that when you regroup in the ten's column, you are taking 1 hundred and changing it into 10 tens. 
          Today we did another gallery walk in class solving subtraction word problems with too much information.  I just love seeing them working together and hearing their conversations while they try to figure out how to solve the problem!

Angry Birds Hands-On Day

Yesterday we had a school-wide hands-on day where instruction is focused on hands-on learning and group tasks.  Our theme yesterday was "Angry Birds" and Studio 214 had a ball!  We had a reading station called "Angry Verbs" and students had to create compound sentences, using conjunctions, verbs, and a direct quote.  We still have some students who are struggling knowing when to use commas, etc. when writing sentences like this.  We also had a couple math stations where students rolled angry birds dice to create four digit numbers.  These numbers had to be subtracted and then students had to use the opposite operation to check their answers.  There were also some science stations too that introduced the beginning vocabulary of force and motion.  We used a homemade sling shot and an angry bird to see what the words meant in real-life.

Van de Walle Math Resource

I have been able to attend a 3-day professional development at GRREC that focuses on using the Van de Walle book.  I've attended one day so far and loved it!  This book focuses on using hands-on learning and letting students experience "productive struggle"- giving them a problem to solve that is really difficult, but they can solve if they try out some strategies, think about it, and not give up.  This is such a great resource because it focuses on the conceptual understanding of math skills and not just the procedure of how to solve a problem.  We discussed this process this morning and I turned students loose on a problem- it was great!  It's discussions like this that reminds me how much I love my job!